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The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

4.0 out of 5 starsNothing really wrong with it, and certainly captured my attention
Yes I saw the twist coming long before it was shown to us, it was a little on the obvious side, but there is still plenty of suspense and mystery to keep you engaged. Plus a decent ending make this a worthwhile viewing, which I recommend.

I always wonder though how these kidnappers have the time to carry out their dastardly plots? Does kidnapping really pay...

2.0 out of 5 starsYou belong to me...
Jennifer is young, beautiful and famous. Everybody knows her name and her popularity brings her everything.

One mans jealousy lures Jennifer to her torture when she finds herself drugged, captured and held in an underground maze. Taken against her will, and subject to psychological punishment, she soon questions her sanity as her watchful tormentor pits her in...

Jennifer is young, beautiful and famous. Everybody knows her name and her popularity brings her everything.

One mans jealousy lures Jennifer to her torture when she finds herself drugged, captured and held in an underground maze. Taken against her will, and subject to psychological punishment, she soon questions her sanity as her watchful tormentor pits her in numerous traps.

After struggling to keep her mind, she meets with Gary, another prisoner, and together they try their wits to escape from the madman behind everything....

Oh those good old days when torture. Porn was hip. Hostels 1 and 2, Cabin Fever, Turistas...., and I believe it came to a close with this movie.

How much of the film you can tolerate is how much you can stand Cuthbert, because she is the movie, everything revolves around her, but her character is a shallow person, so you cannot really sympathise with her.

She is subject to very intense light, made to wear lingerie, and given nutritious smoothies, before finding out a hunk is next to her.

It's not a very involving movie, and the twist can be seen from a mile off. In the end, we have the predictable struggle, and you know the dog will be safe, so it's just gore for gores sake, nothing else.

But it is the best film ever to feature Pruitt Taylor Vince in the bath....now that's scary.

A young beautiful model is drugged, kidnapped and subjected to harrowing torture in a cell of horrors some dark dreary place god knows where. Losing the will to live she is almost at the end of her tether, but her hopes are raised when she learns that a man is in the cell next door to her, can the pair of them escape this foul depraved place?

Captivity starts off promisingly, our protagonist is nicely introduced to us, we are then whisked to off to a dreadful place and subjected to some horrendous things, but once the novelty wears off the picture has no place to go but down hill. It's evident that the makers here felt that by plonking a sexy actress {Elisha Cuthbert} in some torture chamber, piling on the goo in the process, that that was going to make a winning formulaic film, it doesn't, and outside of some gross moments, one scene in particular almost had me emitting my recently digested dinner, it's poor and rather insulting. As poor old Elisha lurches from one dumb scenario to another you start to realise that the film is reliant on a twist to lift it above the mundane writing, but when it comes you will not only be not surprised, you will also feel very cheated. Poor fare all round here and it's hard to believe this is directed by the same man who gave us the emotional splendour that is The Killing Fields, shame on you Roland Joffé. 3/10 mainly for that one sequence, but even that was done better in a Vincent Price picture many years ago.

I can't claim to be an expert on the whole 'torture-porn' genre (especially as I've never managed to make it through any Saw film without falling asleep from terminal boredom) but I'm guessing most entries aren't as confused as Captivity. Not confus'ing' by the way...just confused. For a film with such a straightforward premise and minimal number of characters, the thing manages to be muddled in every way possible, except a good way. A few times I thought my DVD player must be randomly skipping chapters, such was the lack of continuity and basic failure to tell a story that made much sense. There's also no real set up or introduction to characters, so I doubt anyone would be able to care about what happens anyway. We don't know anything about the heroine except she's apparently a top model. That's it. No friends, no interests, no life, just a model. Not really enough substance there to make you root for someone for 90 minutes, in my opinion.

The film rises above 1-star status only because of the nice camera work and vibrant sharp colours it's filmed in, and there's a couple of pretty gruesome gore scenes - although they do not really add to proceedings in any way. "Chillingly Claustrophobic" says the blurb. It isn't. If you want that try something like Open Water [DVD].

As a Cuthbert- and sometimes-horror-movies fan this picture appeared to be obligatory to watch. I actually think the Elisha's acting is one of her best - that's why a +1 star review bonus ;) .

The movie itself could not cope with that. It is just too gross at times when less would have been more. Also the supposed-to-be thrilling scenes are just plain hectic. What is also a little ennerving is that it is always pretty darkish. Well, they are locked in a kind of basement, so this is realistic. On the other hand you saw movies where actors ran through the woods at night and the light was better.

Not being a particular fan of the actors/director or a collector, you might wanna consider simply borrowing the movie or look for a bargain.

This is one of the most barfsville movies for a while with a convoluted and nonsensical plot and characters that act the exact opposite way that real people would (e.g. if someone threatened to throw acid in your face for rule breaking would you continue to be petulant?).

The woman getting burned by the shower head full of corrosive liquid is one of the most horrible things I've ever seen with no purpose but to appeal to torture porn afficionados while the blended offal sequence isn't even necessary.

I love the SAW movies but this is, as my mother used to say, "violence for violence's sake" and if that's your bag then go ahead. Otherwise leave well alone.

Like most, I read the unbelievbly bad reviews for this movie, but told myself It wouldn't be that bad - surely, right? Wrong. Turns out, this time, I should have just listened to the critics (something I never do, but this is an exception - because they were right. 100% spot on.

When the credits rolled, I was slightly baffled as to why this movie was made in the first place. I have never watched a movie that serves no purpose whatsoever and lacks everything from anything in a film. The direction of the movie was horrible and the bad dialogue was ridiculous at times.

I will admit, I have been a fan of Elisha ever since I caught her in teen comedy "The Girl Next Door". I thought she had a great fresh face and real acting abilities - which she proved later on, becoming a regular on the hit sci-fi show "24". But after watching this movie, I'm really shocked at her performance. It's almost like it's her first movie. Or first acting role ever!

There are so many flaws to this movie that it would be impossible to name them all, but I will point out the big dud moments that made me hate this so called "Horror".

The opening was pretty predictable and almost boring - not a good start! The film so desperately tries to be like the Saw, Hostel movies, that you notice it almost 3 minutes into the movie. Although the deaths were sorta inventive, it's nothing we haven't seen before. It brings nothing new to the table. It's simply just "another one of those movies", one of the worst takes on the torture-porn, gore franchise that American directors seem to be obsessed with today. I mean, If you've seen Saw - you've seen them all. Not one of these "movies" stands out from the rest, they all mesh into one horrible gore fest of a movie. Now, the actual film. There is a scene in the movie that was acted out very badly and had to be mentioned. The scene features only Elisha herself (no dialogue) yet it's pitiful. Seing as how her character is a top fashion model, she is invited to a charity wine mixer (or something like that) and like any celebrites duty, it's crucial she goes. Elisha orders her drink and sits alone. The bar tender fixes her drink and leaves it on the bar while he fixes some more. Someone (unknown) spikes her drink. The bar tender then gives Elisha her cocktail. The problem with this scene is, as soon as Elisha takes 1 sip, she starts acting all weird (no longer than 3 seconds after her first taste). Now we all know the effects of a drugged drink do not happen that quickly. It was almost like watching a 5th grader in Drama class acting out a scene - but clearly doing it wrong. It looked half-hearted and actually appeared as though Elisha was tired that day and just couldn't be bothered acting. It's such a clumsy mistake and stupidly left unfixed. It really angered me and it came across very sloppy. This then follows a very dazed Elisha, stumbling to the bathroom - terribly I might add.

She then wakes up in an almost cell like room, were a man is toying with her. Playing sick deranged games, while she fights for her life. She is held captive, all alone (or so she thinks), in a strange house. The "killer" is not in sight, but he makes sure she knows he's watching. The first few scenes are pretty intense and creepy, - but when they use the same idea/scenes over and over again, it gets very boring, very quickly. She soon discovers another person is being held against their will. A man. They quickly manage to gain physical contact with one another and try escape this nightmare and take out the bad guy.

"Apparently" during all this hell, she falls in love with him........huh?? I know, confused? Me to. You don't fall in love with someone you have known for less than 24 hours! Especially the situation these two are in. When a mad man holds you captvie and is trying to kill you, the last thing you will be thinking about is love, or attraction for that matter. All you wanna do is get outta there. Ridiculous plot. This soon follows a sex scene, which comes off incredibly cheap and tacky. It's so obvious it was only thrown in for the simple reason of having a sex scene. By this point I had lost all hope in the movie. The direction was becoming catastrophic.

I will not give away the ending, but all in all the movie sucks! BIG TIME! This coming from a big Elisha fan. I'm now wondering if Elisha is actually a strong, capable actor at all. Or was the movie so bad that even she couldn't save it. I'm not exactly sure yet. All I know is, it was a poor excuse for a horror movie. In fact, I've seen straight to dvd releases, B-movies, D movies even, that look like Oscar winners compared to this.

While I'm not a fan of the Saw, Hostel movies. I would take them over this anyday.

The film is called Captivity. Someone would have to hold me captive to sit through this ridiculous tripe all over again.

I was looking forward to seeing this film as I like all these type of films.I was a little bit disappointed with it.I thought that the story could have been better,I don't want to give anything away so I won't go into detail too much but I was left thinking after the film had finished that what I had just seen I has guessed the ending early in the film.The acting was ok but I had seen Elish Cuthbert in better roles.Overall I was a bit disappointed with the film and there are better films in the genre out there.

I bought this, along with a few other so-called 'torture porn' horror films, after reading reviews of how disgusting it was on various sites. What can I say - I like to be shocked.

Captivity had some promise from the outset. The first half an hour was fairly 'enjoyable', although at no point did I cringe in horror at any of the scenes. They were reasonably tame, but they did leave me feeling tense, wondering what would finally become of young Elisha.

Sadly, about half way into the film, this tension all but dissipated. The film took a rather daft twist, and, rather than being in the Hostel-style which I had hoped for, it ended up being more like a 'Scream' film.

Overall, this wasn't a terrible film, but I just had hopes of it being more horrific than it was, and unfortunately it tailed off into a disappointing climax. I won't be watching it again, nor will I advise friends to bother with it!

Yes I saw the twist coming long before it was shown to us, it was a little on the obvious side, but there is still plenty of suspense and mystery to keep you engaged. Plus a decent ending make this a worthwhile viewing, which I recommend.

I always wonder though how these kidnappers have the time to carry out their dastardly plots? Does kidnapping really pay well enough for you not to have to earn a living? Just a thought.

This movie does indeed have a hint of saw and hostel going on but is not quite as good as either of those movies, it does have a few good original ideas though too! It maybe a little lame now compared to some later films that have done it better but still worth checking out at a cheap price. Elisha Cuthbert is a really nice actress and plays her part well, if your into horror thrillers then you will probably enjoy it.